Thursday, June 12, 2008

Survival Books in The Corporate World

In this post I am not going to tell you to read ‘boring’ management books. Probably you know about those books more than me.

I will tell you to read books that are not theoretical, not boring; in fact it will be the most fun books you’ve ever read.

I like to read witty and humorous books about corporate world. Sometimes I need that to understand our CEOs perspective or to analyze what’s going on in the board room. What are those books?


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What would Machiavelli Do? By Stanley Bing
This book is brutal, witty, to the point, and sarcastic. Don’t ever be too serious in practicing what’s in this book. Use this book as your guidance to understand some weird act of your CEOs. Maybe they have been practicing one of Machiavelli method.
I keep this book as my ‘bible’ to sail the corporate world, especially as the ‘CEO Prompter’.
So, What Would Machiavelli Do?
  1. He would realize that loving yourself means never having to say you're sorry He would feast on other people's discord
  2. He would establish and maintain a psychotic level of control
  3. He wouldn't exactly seek the company of ass-kissers and bimbos, but he wouldn't reject them out of hand either
  4. He would kill people, but only if he could feel good about himself afterward
  5. He would use other people's opinions to sell his book!


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The Dilbert Principles, By Scott Adams
If Stanley Bing writes how to be a Machiavellian leader, Scott Adams writes from the workers point of view. The "Dilbert Principle" say that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

Chapters include such titles as "Pretending To Work," "Machiavellian Methods," and "Engineers, Scientists, Programmers, and Other Odd People." The book is full with such advice as "The worth of any project is how it will sound on your resume" and "Never walk down the hall without a document in your hand". He stresses the importance of using the business jargon as often as possible and discusses the value of computers in pretending to be busy. We all familiar with this cynical, satirical story of corporate life. This book is very funny.

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The World is Flat, By Thomas L. Friedman.
You can come out from your ‘cubicles’ and see what’s going on around the globe by reading this book. Soon, how the world works will be changing dramatically and of course we don’t want to ‘miss the train’. We must change how we think and how we act, because the world is also changing rapidly.